The Importance of Creating Loyal Customers For Business Success

The importance of great customer service and driving love and loyalty from those customers cannot be understated.
Demandforce subsidiary Flowtown, a social marketing analysis and consulting company, found that it is 6 to 7 times more costly to acquire a new customer, than it is to simply keep a current customer happy. Getting first-time customers to purchase your product or service can mean advertising and promotion, new account setup, personal selling and an expensive “getting to know” process, none of which are usually required to simply retain your current customer base.
And there are also a couple of big social behaviors to keep in mind here:

1) Powerful Friend Referrals

Have you ever had a friend or family member rave about a movie or restaurant? If you have, you probably gave that film or eating establishment a shot, didn’t you? The power of word-of-mouth advertising is huge because it is free.
And your product or service benefits from social proof that is already seen as believable. When someone recommends a product to their friends, they are communicating with a very receptive audience. This means that potential customer is already subconsciously inclined to give your service the benefit of the doubt, before they have even purchased from you.
And while there are countless studies showing how likely it is for a satisfied customer to buy from the same company in the future, reams of scientific data are not needed here. You will most probably return to vendors and companies you have used and enjoyed in the past, rather than looking for new alternatives. Human beings love familiarity and order, and sticking with a business they already know and are familiar with is preferred. So when you give them great reasons to do just that, you many times have created a customer for life.

2) Dissatisfied Customers Are Talkative

Aside from the positive social referral benefit, when you provide a great product at a great value and back it up with outstanding customer service, you do not suffer from powerful and deadly negative feedback.
The Demandforce company we referred to earlier also found that a dissatisfied customer will alert anywhere from 9 to 15 people about a bad customer service experience. And the Small Business Association recently reported that roughly 2/3 of all customers who have left one company for another said they did so because of poor treatment.
It is smarter, more profitable and cheaper to keep your current customers than attract new ones. That is why you need to employ these steps to get customers to LOVE you!
Tomorrow I will share with you how to fine turn your customer service for increased satisfaction and sales.
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